Hello! Welcome back to my blog! It’s been a few months since my last post and a whole school year since my last summative reflection post. I’m in grade 10 now, yes it’s quite strange, but I sort of enjoy it. As you may know I’m not in Scimatics this year, but I’m still in Humanities and Maker! For this post I’ll be explaining the process and key points that helped me build on my understanding of how to use literacy communication to portray my understanding of how political institutions are influenced. This Humanities project, that I completed, was called ‘Gold Digger’. The final product for this project is an incorporation of a short story and and ‘Character Card’. The driving question for this project is “How did the discovery of gold shape our province and its people?”. I built up the answer to this driving question through different keystones and supporting checkpoints.
The introduction to this project started with building knowledge. Throughout this portion of the project I was really able to understand key factual parts of the British Columbia Gold Rush. I watched different documentaries and read articles. When doing this I was able to take notes and understanding key information that would be present throughout the many keystones to come.
The introduction to this project started with building knowledge. Throughout this portion of the project I was really able to understand key factual parts of the British Columbia Gold Rush. I watched different documentaries and read articles. When doing this I was able to take notes and understanding key information that would be present throughout the many keystones to come.
After building knowledge about the British Columbia Gold Rush I was able to apply my knowledge into the 1st keystone of the year, which was about creating a cause and consequence paragraph about the influx of miners and their impact on BC. To create my paragraph I referenced my notes, but thought of the underlying and human agency causes that could result in the influx of settlers in BC and recorded it in a graphic organizer. After thinking about causes I wrote down the different immediate and long-term consequences that could result from the influx. I then built on my understanding of how economics, ideological, and geographic influence the functioning of political institutions. To create an insightful paragraph I received and implemented feedback to improve the product.
When the 1st keystone was completed I was able to move onto the 2nd Keystone, which was the creation of a ‘Character Card’. This was used to build knowledge and skills relating to the final goal. To create a Character Card I was giving a specific group of people to research about and give a generalization of a person within that category. The topic/group of I received was the Californians. To understand more about the topic, and move further with my goals in the project, I learnt how to make notes in the app Craft. To have an effective note ‘making’ method I put section in craft dedicated to the main questions that I wanted to answer throughout my Character Card. With the information created into my words I was able to insert images, create a name for my character, and finalize ideas in my Character Card.
Within these different factors to my learning I was finally able to create the final Keystone, number 3, which was the creation of my story. The story I created was about a the character used in my Character Card, but with slight alteration. To create this story I used a checklist and had many different drafts. The first, baseline item that I completed was a ‘Three Act Structure’, which gave the overall idea of the story, presented in three parts. This was then converted into a checklist and summited for feedback. After I was approved to create my story I slowly added more details and dialogue to the main story. When this was finish I received feedback from peers and revised my story. I think this story really shows my ability to understand the complex ideas of others and incorporate them throughout forms of text.
Throughout the creation of my story I left hint to my answer to the driving question “How did the discovery of gold shape our province and its people?”. The discovery of gold shaped our province and our people because it create a civilization that is filled with culture vastness. With the desire to strike it rich many miners came to British Columbia from many different places. These different people developed the economy by the creation of commercial centres. With this economic and population increase British Columbia was able to move into a modernized province with range in culture diversity.
In conclusion throughout this project I was able to improve on my exploration of text and understanding of diverse ideas of the world and the development institutions by different factors. In regards to the content and cohesiveness of the final product, I could’ve improved. Within my Character Card I found that some of the details don’t match up with my story due to the generalization. This is because I wanted to create a detailed character and the parts of my Character Card didn’t that set criteria of mine. Overall, I think this project improved my used of different communication skills, specifically through forms of media, and I was able to improved on the the curricular competencies that were used throughout this project.
What would you name a fictional character in the 1800s?
Alicia 😀